flat tax

administration of income tax

...is not always clear when income is earned and when taxes are incurred; a direct tax on consumer spending would require the subtraction of net saving (or exemption of capital income in the case of a flat tax, which imposes the same level of tax on all taxpayers) from realized income, and balance sheets would be required in order to prove that saving was correctly reported. Some favour the direct...

comparison to consumption-based taxation

Some economists view the flat tax as an alternative that is even simpler than consumption-based taxation but would achieve similar economic effects. It works by exempting most capital income from taxation at the individual level; that is, only labour income is taxed. This proposal, like consumption-based taxation, suffers from the loss of progressivity that results when the tax on most capital...